Using the current debates on globalization and transnational linkeges as a starting point, the paper suggests to overcome the essentialist understanding of the spatial in social sciences and to build on the relational view on space. This view suggests not to see geographic space as a (static, non-changable) context of social relations, but to understand space as a historic-specific socio-spatial entity produced by social action (Brenner 2004). The paper examplifies concrete (qualitative) methods which allow to include the relational understanding of space into the research praxis, such as scale approach (Brenner 2004), the mobile methods approach (Büscher and Urry 2011) and multi-sited ethnography (Marcus 1994). In examplifies steps and advanteges of these research techniques and addresses open questions.